No more good guys

How is “flood gate” going to end? Someone asked me in despair. Another remarked, ”Everyone is a villain. There’s no good guy left.” Yet another added that, in the “Hello Garci” or other scandals, there used to be good guys and bad guys. Finally, someone else recounted that at the end of a board meeting, this parting observation was made: ”There are no good guys left.” And so the common question became: Where will all this go, and who benefits in the end?

We have a situation where the discredit is not only widespread but also afflicts the three branches of government. In Congress, the Senate is facing the prospect of close to a third of its membership ending up in detention here or abroad, either for crimes against humanity or various acts of omission or commission with regard to official records and official funds; the House, never high in the public’s estimation, has sunk to its lowest standing since the days of the Batasang Pambansa; and even the Supreme Court seems collectively committed to winning a race to the bottom.

I wonder who, exactly, would lift either their voices or even a finger in protest if Congress—both the House and the Senate—were padlocked tomorrow, or even do more than shrug their shoulders if the members of the Supreme Court were instantly dismissed and sent home. No one would display grief or the slightest regret if the upper echelons of our bureaucracy were to be rounded up and placed in a concentration camp in Corregidor, and a similar indifference might greet the dismissal of most (though not all) provincial and local executives.

And there lies the problem for the vast majority who might actually enjoy the thought of mass unemployment for our elected and appointed officials: What would come next?

A problem with public opinion is that even if no one would weep over the mass firings in Congress and the Supreme Court, there is high anxiety over the necessary prerequisite, which would be for a similar fate to befall the president or the vice president; here, it might be like many other upheavals in many other nations: a third loyal, a third hostile, and a third indifferent but anxious not to get dragged down by the two opposing sides.

Aside from that, even if the top two were somehow convinced to vacate their offices, what might happen next suggests the strong possibility of the outcome being a blunder worse than the initial crimes.

For some reason, it’s been reported that some business types and retired military officers find the idea of having the head of the San Miguel Corp. act as a “consensus caretaker” attractive, while the radical left, for its part, wants a vague because unnamed clique to take over.

The solution we have at present is the one identified and put in place by the President: round up the usual suspects and throw the book at them, but do it in a staggered manner and with lots of advance notice so that the momentum—and the spotlight—remains focused on the Palace and its allies with everyone else reduced to wringing their hands or raising their fists, while the real action remains restricted to institutional arenas still under official control.

People can and will complain that it’s selective justice with plenty of opportunities for the scapegoats of today to receive executive clemency tomorrow, but it’s still a lot more, sadly speaking, than many other presidents were willing to do, and many more are getting enmeshed in the web of investigations and charges than might have been expected under (more normal) circumstances.

To be sure, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is no late President Ramon Magsaysay, who fired then Executive Secretary Fred Ruiz Castro for doing a minor favor for one of the former president’s relatives. But if, indeed, charges end up filed against former Speaker Martin Romualdez, it might be said with some justice that it would be as astounding as the late President Corazon “Cory” Aquino throwing the book at former Tarlac Rep. Jose “Peping” Cojuangco (everything being purely public speculation; I am merely referring to the, shall-we-say, low regard both enjoy from the public).

Yet, is there anything more normal than institutions and the people holding positions of authority in them eventually rising to their own level of incompetence and sinking in the eyes of the public? It has happened before; it can even be matched, if you look hard enough, to the expiration of the social contract that gave birth to constitutions. Thirty-seven years separated the convening of the 1934 and 1971 Constitutional Conventions, each an attempt to forge a lasting social contract; 38 years separate the convening of the 1987 Constitutional Commission and Congress, finally, after three stubborn decades of refusing to do so, proposing an elected constitutional convention, the only method that has consistently met with public acceptance as legitimate.

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Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3